Science Education Research Research Articles

On Idealizations and Models in Science Education

Idealizations are omnipresent in science. However, to date, science education research has paid surprisingly little attention to the use of idealizations in fostering students’ model competence and understanding of the nature of science (NOS). The starting point for the theoretical reflection in this paper is that insufficient consideration of idealizations in the science classroom can lead to learning difficulties. The following discussions should help to clarify the terms idealization and model and their relationship to each other. An example is drawn from physics. At least two cases can apply when considering model usage in the classroom. In the first case, to understand an observed phenomenon, a model (as a representation) of the situation to be explained is constructed. At this point, it is necessary to perform idealization. Seemingly, this step is still neglected in much of the science education literature but is well addressed in the philosophy of science. In the second case, existing models to work with are introduced, perhaps alongside a real experimental situation. This approach is called working with models in science education. This paper focuses primarily on the first case. Against the background of model building, a positioning and conceptual approximation of idealizations take place. To organize the idealization process, a framework of several categories of idealization adopted from science philosophy is offered. The framework is intended to stimulate explicit reflection about how models are constructed. The construction of a model by idealization is illustrated through an example from geometrical optics. Finally, the considerations presented are discussed in the context of the literature, and suggested research topics are provided.

A Rasch Analysis of Item Quality of the Chemical Literacy Assessment for Investigating Student’s Chemical Literacy on Chemical Rate Concepts

<p style="text-align:justify">Assessment is a topic that continues to be developed in science education research. Assessment evaluates not only students' cognitive abilities but also their thinking skills. Therefore, in this study, an assessment that could measure students' chemical literacy was developed. Chemical literacy is a thinking skill that students must develop as part of their chemistry learning. The goal of this study was to assess item' quality, as well as student’ chemical literacy on the concept of chemical rate. The Rasch model was employed to analyze the data in this study. The results of this study depict that the developed assessment had sufficient reliability and validity to be used to assess students' chemical literacy. Furthermore, the analysis of the students’ responses to the items revealed that many students did not understand or were unaware of the context presented. These findings suggest that students' chemical literacy in the material for the reaction rate is still lacking and needs to be improved. As a result, the teacher's role in assisting students in improving their chemical literacy through chemistry learning is critical.</p>

Evolution of a Bidirectional Pediatric Critical Care Educational Partnership in a Resource-Limited Setting.

Introduction: Children in resource-limited settings are disproportionately affected by common childhood illnesses, resulting in high rates of mortality. A major barrier to improving child health in such regions is limited pediatric-specific training, particularly in the care of children with critical illness. While global health rotations for trainees from North America and Europe have become commonplace, residency and fellowship programs struggle to ensure that these rotations are mutually beneficial and do not place an undue burden on host countries. We created a bidirectional, multimodal educational program between trainees in Manila, Philippines, and Baltimore, Maryland, United States, to improve the longitudinal educational experience for all participants.Program Components: Based on stakeholder input and a needs assessment, we established a global health training program in which pediatricians from the Philippines traveled to the United States for observerships, and pediatric residents from a tertiary care center in Baltimore traveled to Manila. Additionally, we created and implemented a contextualized simulation-based shock curriculum for pediatric trainees in Manila that can be disseminated locally. This bidirectional program was adapted to include telemedicine and regularly scheduled “virtual rounds” and educational case conferences during the COVID-19 pandemic. Providers from the two institutions have collaborated on educational and clinical research projects, offering opportunities for resource sharing, bidirectional professional development, and institutional improvements.Conclusion: Although creating a mutually beneficial global health partnership requires careful planning and investment over time, establishment of a successful bidirectional educational and professional development program in a limited-resource setting is feasible and benefits learners in both countries.

Implementation of a Playful Microproject Based on Traditional Games for Working on Mathematical and Scientific Content

According to previous research, we consider it necessary to extend the use of games, as mediating elements, in the learning of STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics) contents rejected by many students. For this, we have carried out an educational research project on games, with an ethnomathematical approach, since games are an important cultural sign with mathematical and scientific potentialities. We have prepared an anthropological study and an analytical one, generating a catalogue of games from different cultures. Thus, we have verified that, starting with culture, we can get to the game, but we posed the query as to whether, starting from certain games, we could achieve enculturation, by activating mathematical and scientific content in the players. To answer this query, we have created a curricular design called “playful microproject” with three traditional games from different cultures and geographical contexts. The microproject was implemented with 32 participants, from 8 to 12 years old. To analyse the results of the microproject, a case study was carried out using qualitative methodology. As part of the playful microproject, the necessary materials for each game were made by hand, and the games were then played. Both the realization of the games and the act of playing showed evidence of mathematical and scientific content, although more in the act of playing. The results revealed that: (1) the three games mobilized 21 categories of analysis, made up of scientific-mathematical content; (2) the three games proved to be equivalent in strong didactic potential; (3) that the microproject provides a valuable intercultural educational approach. The contents evidenced constitute a fundamental part of the Primary Education curriculum: classify, organize, measure, and quantify items, as well as formulate hypotheses, draw conclusions, place oneself in space, and design strategies, among others. It is concluded that these games can promote scientific-mathematical enculturation in a contextualized way.

'Fostering critical engagement rather than blind devotion': calling for transdisciplinary microbiology research.

'Fostering critical engagement rather than blind devotion': calling for transdisciplinary microbiology research.

Connecting explanations to representations: benefits of highlighting techniques in tutorial videos on students’ learning in organic chemistry

ABSTRACT Research in science education agrees that one of the key challenges of learners in the discipline is certainly connecting domain-specific representations to the underlying concepts. One way of supporting students to make applicable connections is using purposefully designed highlighting techniques in multimedia instructions. In order to examine the influence of different highlighting techniques on learning, 171 chemistry undergraduate students were provided with tutorial videos either with static, dynamic or without highlighting. The results show that students viewing tutorial videos with dynamic highlighting gave more sophisticated answers in direct retention tasks. Furthermore, results indicate that low prior knowledge is compensated by both static and dynamic highlighting techniques. This finding is supported by causal mediation analysis, which indicates that the effect of prior knowledge is moderated by the different highlighting techniques. Besides student learning outcomes, students’ evaluation of the different tutorial videos shows significant benefits of the highlighted instructions in terms of perceiving higher comprehensibility. The results support the use of appropriate highlighting techniques in instructional formats to foster a stronger link between conceptual knowledge and representations.

Assessment of Computational Thinking – A Croatian Evidence-Centered Design model

The new Croatian Informatics curriculum, which introduces computational thinking concepts into learning outcomes has been put into practice. A computational thinking assessment model reflecting the learning outcomes of the Croatian curriculum was created using an evidence-centered design approach. The possibility of assessing the computational thinking concepts, abstraction, decomposition, and algorithmic thinking, in an actual classroom situation and examples of such assessment is increasingly coming to the forefront of computer science educational research. Precisely for that purpose, the research was conducted. Research data are collected through the test and questionnaire of 407 pupils (10 middle schools, age 12), analysed by exploratory factor analysis and non-parametric tests. Results showed that the presented model was suitable to assess the understanding of the concepts of abstraction and algorithmic thinking, independently of the previous experience with programming languages and pupil's gender, while assessment of decomposition needs more work and improvement, some recommendations are provided. Also, it received positive feedback from pupils and teachers what implicated that such an assessment model could help teachers in building a real-time measurement instrument.

Key principles for an integrated intercultural literary pedagogy: An educational design research project on arts integration for intercultural competence

Intercultural competence in foreign language teaching has gained importance in recent times. Although current work has highlighted the advantages of content and language integrated learning (CLIL) for intercultural development, little is known about its potential for teaching literature in secondary schools. Treating literature itself as an art form, the aim of this article is to formulate research-based design principles for an integrated intercultural literary pedagogy (IILP) that may foster intercultural competence through arts integration in foreign language classes. This article reports on the process of evaluating IILP-based pilot lesson materials in pre-university education in the Netherlands. Educational design research was applied as a method that encompasses the systematic study of designing, developing, and evaluating educational interventions through an iterative process of evaluation with stakeholders. Three iterations of formative evaluation were conducted, with additions to the tentative design principles following each of the first two iterations. The process resulted in a set of four refined principles. Results also illustrated the effectiveness of IILP-based lesson materials for intercultural competence. Although participating students encountered some difficulties relating to the functionality of the design, the students appreciated its social relevance and reported that the processing of literary texts through dialogic tasks with peers in the target language fostered intercultural language learning.

How youth use scientific argumentation in civic participation on climate change: polar bears, the Great Barrier Reef, and ‘your job as president’

ABSTRACT Civic engagement that leverages scientific concepts and reasoning is cited as a goal of science education, yet little research has attended to authentic enactments of science-related civic engagement that youth undertake currently. We shed light on this understudied area by investigating youth letters written to the (then unknown) future US president in 2016. Using qualitative text analysis, we examined youth scientific reasoning via argumentation about climate change, aiming to clarify how youth use science in conjunction with other forms of reasoning within civic engagement, specifically around two popular icons of climate change—polar bears and the Great Barrier Reef. We describe several observed trends including a high frequency of logical appeals and their co-occurrence with implicit ethical appeals. We use these findings to offer implications for science education research and practice, suggesting explicit attention to the role of morals, ethics, and politics in science-related civic engagement.

First-Year Pre-service Primary School Teachers’ Conceptual Structure of Ecosystem Ecology Concepts

Science education research has been increasingly concerned with students’ and teachers’ conceptions of central scientific concepts over the past decades. However, science teaching today should not only convey knowledge but also values and science practices in order to empower students to become responsible citizens in a world that is facing ecological as well as social problems. Thus, a profound understanding of ecology and systems thinking skills are seen as paramount. This paper explores first-year pre-service primary school teachers’ conceptual understanding of ecology through the use of a word association test. Students were given four stimulus words and asked to provide five response words to each stimulus. Furthermore, they were asked to formulate a sentence related to biology, using each stimulus word. Response words were categorised and the frequency of the words was calculated. The findings show very limited understanding of the ecological concepts and their interrelatedness. Furthermore, the students showed numerous misconceptions regarding energy flow and food chain relationships. Thus our findings support other authors’ propositions that students often struggle with understanding ecology concepts. The findings further imply that the instruction students receive at school is not successful in replacing existing misconceptions with accurate science concepts.

Infografías científicas en secundaria: complejos de significados multimodales en ensambles compuestos verbales-visuales

The complexity of science discourse has long been recognized as challenging for many students. Systemic functional linguistic accounts of technicality and meaning aggregation, differentiating scientific and everyday discourse, have explicated the linguistic complexity confronting students. The complexity of images and image-language ensembles in science discourse has not been similarly delineated. Two aspects of multimodal meaning-making have not been sufficiently theorized to support pedagogies of visualization interpretation and creation in science: (1) the role of the verbiage within scientific visualizations has been largely ignored; (2) image analysis has emphasized single-structure images, e.g. narrative or classificational or analytical, whereas multiple structures in a single image is a frequent and significant resource in science. This paper outlines a framework describing the co-deployment of image and verbiage to construct multi-structure image-language ensembles in high school science textbooks. Using this framework two investigations are described: (1) variation among textbook infographics in image-language co-articulation representing meaning complexes of phenomena such as mitosis; (2) the relationship between co-articulation of image-language resources and achievement level in infographics constructed by senior high school students. Implications are drawn for extending transdisciplinary research in educational semiotics and science education and for pedagogies of multimodal disciplinary literacy development in high school science.

PHÁT TRIỂN KHOA HỌC GIÁO DỤC TẠI TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC SƯ PHẠM HÀ NỘI: HIỆN TẠI VÀ TƯƠNG LAI

Since 1964, welcoming Uncle Ho to visit the university, Hanoi National University of Education (HNUE) has always strived to follow Uncle Ho's advice to deserve to be the leading "key" teacher training institution of Vietnam. Along with the task of training teachers, Hanoi National University of Education is also one of the very few leading institutions for research in educational science in Vietnam. This article focuses on summarizing and analyzing the educational science research achievements of Hanoi National University of Education in the past decade since the beginning of educational reform from three angles: 1) The university's contributions to the Ministry of Education and Training and for the Education Sector in particular, for the development of the national education plan in general. 2) Professional development research, development of teaching staff according to the strategy, vision and mission of the key Pedagogical University. 3) Research cooperation with domestic and foreign educational institutions. The article also raises suggestions for Hanoi National University of Education in the following years, new research trends in education science and professional development for the university's teaching staff in the coming years.

Index of Undergraduate Students’ Attitude towards Scientific Research: A Study in Peru and Spain

The aim of this research was to determine the attitude towards scientific research in undergraduate university students from Peru and Spain. The research was descriptive, comparative and cross-sectional. The sample consisted of 953 undergraduate students currently enrolled in universities in Spain (485) and Peru (468), and the information was collected through convenience sampling. The General Index of Attitude towards Research instrument was applied, which was adapted for the study. Its statistical validation was carried out and high reliability of the instrument was proved with a Cronbach's Alpha of 921. According to the questionnaire scores, a sociodemographic survey was also applied. Regarding the results, it was found that students from Peru have a high predisposition towards research (51.5%) compared to students from Spain (23.5%). Regarding knowledge about research, students in both countries recognize that scientific research is not adequately valued (60.6% in Spain and 54.3% in Peru); however, they would like to carry out educational scientific research (63.3% and 71.2, respectively). Regarding the evaluation of the quality of university education, undergraduate students from Spain perceive a better quality in their education (7.22 out of 10), quality of the program in which they are enrolled (7.31 out of 10), quality of fellow students (7.46 out of 10), and welfare and infrastructure services (7.30 out of 10). It is concluded that students from Peru show a better attitude towards research (M=28.98, DT=10.26) than students from Spain (M=22.61, DT=8.28).

COMMUNICATION MODEL OF RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN STAKEHOLDERS IN EDUCATIONAL INNOVATIVE SCIENTIFIC PROJECTS

A project approach is used to address issues of improving educational processes. Implementation of educational innovative research projects is effective with the participation of a large number of stakeholders. Stakeholders include representatives of the state, business and community. The formation of common values, which are focused on quality education, for all groups of stakeholders will help to effectively implement educational innovative research projects. To do this, you need to create an appropriate communication model. Project communications consist of the processes of timely collection, dissemination, storage, receipt and use of information. One of the responsibilities of the project manager is to create a kind of intellectual space for the project stakeholders to discuss common tasks, goals and areas of interest. The purpose of communications management is to meet communication needs of project participants and solve communication problems in case of their occurrence. The success of a project depends on how different project team members and stakeholders interact with each other. With this end in view, a model of the relationship between stakeholders in educational projects was created; this model makes it possible to manage different types of communication (formal and informal). The results of the study were used to manage communications in the implementation of educational innovative research projects at National Transport University (NTU) while carrying out the international TEMPUS project ‘Fostering the Knowledge Triangle in Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova’. The results of the project show that the efficiency of communications between NTU and international partners is 0.5 - 1.0, which indicates that the result of the educational innovative research project is good after the communication process.
 Thus, the developed model of communications management in educational innovative research projects allows determining the set of input and output parameters, constraints, control and uncontrolled variables in communication processes and is the basis for the management of formal and informal communication.

Educating the Educator: Evaluation and Review of the ADMSEP Education Scholars Program.

ObjectiveThis report examines the first 8 years of the Association of Directors of Medical Student Education in Psychiatry (ADMSEP) Education Scholars Program (ESP) to determine the impact of the program on alumni careers and scholarship and their reception of the ESP. The 2-year longitudinal professional development program, launched in 2012, provides foundational knowledge to improve scholarship skills for faculty in psychiatry medical student education. The program is unique among national faculty development programs for psychiatry medical educators in its focus on scholarship and its requirement of completion of a research project in medical education..MethodsAll 19 graduates of the program were sent a 30-question survey that explored alumni perceptions of the impact of the program on their confidence to engage in educational scholarship and on their careers. Quantitative and qualitative analyses were used to examine responses to the multiple choice and open-ended questions. A PubMed search was used to ascertain papers published by alumni since completion of the program.ResultsGraduate survey responses indicated a high level of satisfaction with the key elements of the program. Alumni respondents reported positive perceptions of participation in the program on their careers as well as on their interest, confidence, knowledge, and skills to engage in scholarship. Nine alumni have had scholarly work published since completion of the program.ConclusionsThe ADMSEP ESP was highly valued by participants. It fills an important need for faculty in psychiatry medical student education by providing a national professional development program focused on scholarship.

High School Teachers’ Perspectives on Shifting towards Teaching NGSS-Aligned Project Based Learning Curricular Units

ABSTRACT To meet the demands of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), teachers need to reconsider their current instructional practices, shifting from learning about scientific ideas to making sense of phenomena and solving problems using three-dimensional learning components. Project-Based Learning (PBL) provides a framework for creating NGSS-aligned curricular materials that supports this shift. In this study, high school chemistry and physics teachers collaborated with science education researchers to develop PBL-aligned units that were later enacted in their classrooms. Results found several emerging concepts regarding shifting toward PBL: (i) the units helped students build toward the NGSS 3-dimensional learning goals, (ii) using the driving questions was important in providing lessons with coherence and relevance, (iii) students were meaningfully using scientific practices, mostly the practice of developing and using scientific modeling, (iv) students collaborated and shared ideas to make sense of phenomena, and (v) students’ artifacts contributed to their learning and to the assessment of their learning by the teachers. Teachers reported encountering several challenges when shifting to PBL, mostly for those of which it was their first interaction with the PBL approach and the NGSS. These ideas were further supported with students’ data, obtained from real-time reports, indicating students’ increased engagement in the modeling practice and increased opportunities to collaborate and share ideas with other students during most of the PBL units. This study demonstrates that engaging teachers and students with PBL curricula can support successful integration of the NGSS learning goals, as perceived by the teachers and reported by students.

Educational Robotics in Science Teaching

The use of technologies such as educational software and robotics to support the teaching and learning process is increasing. Educational robotics has proven to arouse interest in students, as it allows physical handling and active participation in the learning process. In this sense, this manuscript aims to describe the Educational Robotics research project as an Incentive to the Study of Science approved in PROPPI EDITAL No. 77/2017 - INTERNAL SOURCE 2018/2019, which had as a proposal to integrate undergraduates of Licentiate Degree in Mathematics and Computer Science of IFRS - Campus Ibirubá to jointly carry out analyzes and develop procedures for teaching and learning science (mathematics/physics) using Educational Robotics resources, motivating students of the Technical Course in Computing Integrated to High School. Thus, while this project offered an internship field for undergraduates, it promoted interest in the study of science among participants, leading them to engage and promoting greater participation.

Qualitative Research in Veterinary Medical Education: Part 1-Principles of Qualitative Design.

Qualitative methodologies are relative newcomers to health sciences education research. While they may look very different to their quantitative counterparts in terms of size and scope, when well-applied they offer a fresh perspective and generate valuable research findings. Although qualitative research is being increasingly conducted in veterinary medical education, there are few contextualized resources to assist those who would like to develop their expertise in this area. In this article, we address this by introducing the principles of qualitative research design in a veterinary medical education context. Drawing from a range of contemporary resources, we explore the types of research goals and questions that are amenable to qualitative inquiry and discuss the process of formulating a worthwhile research question. We explain what research paradigms are and introduce readers to some of the methodological options available to them in qualitative research. Examples from veterinary medical education are used to illustrate key points. In a second companion article, we will focus on the decisions that need to be made regarding data sampling, collection, and analysis. We will also consider how qualitative research is evaluated, and discuss how qualitative findings are applied. Taken together, the two articles build an understanding of qualitative research, illuminate its potential to contribute to the scholarship of teaching and learning in veterinary medical education, and equip readers with an improved capacity to appraise its value.

A Systematic Literature Review of School Science Programs Addressing indigenous Perspectives: Research Approaches and Opportunities (1999-2019)

This article is a systematic literature review of cross-cultural science education research articles published between 1999 and 2019. Programs and practices that seek to extend our understanding of implementing effective cross-cultural research are analysed. More research in elementary school contexts, particularly in rural and remote locations is recommended. Including cognitive outcomes into the data collection mix would allow for a clearer picture of student learning. Future research in the field of indigenous science education should also include culturally responsive methodologies that work in an agreed middle-ground space.

Lower secondary school students’ perceptions of science assessment feedback and their conceptions of science assessment: a transitional phase of developing an understanding of assessment

ABSTRACT Background In the field of science education, the importance of assessment in students’ learning process has been recognized. Understanding of how students perceive science assessment and feedback may be an important issue that science education researchers need to pay attention to in order to achieve meaningful learning. Purpose The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationships between lower secondary students’ perceptions of science assessment feedback and their conceptions of science assessment. Sample The participants of this survey study were 313 eighth-grade students (161 males and 152 females) in Taiwan. Design and methods Two instruments were adapted and implemented to investigate the aim of this study (i.e. the perceptions of science assessment feedback and conceptions of science assessment). To examine the structural relations between the students’ perceptions of science assessment feedback and their conceptions of science assessment, partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) analysis was performed. Results The results showed that students who perceived the science assessment feedback as knowledge of the results, reports, and grades (i.e. outcome feedback) tended to highlight the surface conceptions of science assessment (i.e. Reproducing knowledge). Students with the perceptions of assessment feedback as the provision of the correct answer (i.e. corrective feedback) were prone to hold summative conceptions (i.e. Rehearsing and Accountability). In particular, those students who regarded the science assessment feedback as process feedback which focused on improving learning may have had both summative and formative purposes of science assessment (i.e. Improving learning, Problem solving, and Critical judgment). Conclusions The findings revealed that the lower secondary students’ perceptions of science assessment feedback made a significant contribution to their conceptions of science assessment and may be in a transitional phase of shaping an understanding of assessment. The practical implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.